Zooming in on Pandora’s Cluster

This sequence starts with a broad view of the southern skies. We close in on an apparently empty region in the faint constellation of Sculptor. As we zoom in further we can start to make out a faint cloud of very distant galaxies. In the final sequence, based on images from the ESO VLT and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this object is revealed to be a spectacularly rich merging cluster of galaxies called Abell 2744, and nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster. This remarkable object seems to be the result of the collision of at least four separate galaxy clusters.